


it always had to go this way

by orphan_account



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-31
Updated: 2010-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-09 19:58:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray wants everything, but he'll settle for this, Walt gone pliant and quiet in the loose curve of his arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it always had to go this way

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Wolf Parade's _What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go This Way)_

It's not a slow slide into anything, nothing explicable, just one night, one night so cold that his sweat slides into shakes, Ray kisses Walt over the relative comfort of a berm, and Walt kisses him back, mouth tasting like skittles and dust and exhaustion.

And it could have been a one time thing, some sort of combat hysteria, some sort of fucked up combat jack, but it keeps happening even though the risk might just be bigger than the reward.

Ray wants everything, but he'll settle for this, Walt gone pliant and quiet in the loose curve of his arms. He'll settle for the minute past safety that they spend with Walt's forehead resting against his neck, his fingers scratching through Walt's hair.

*

It shouldn't be a surprise when it goes south, everything is going south, everything does for this screwby platoon and everything has in Ray's life, no exception. But this, he'd figured, might be different, because Walt wasn't the kind of guy to let things get fucked up.

Ray's talking about something, doesn't know what, just letting his mouth run so that he can distract Walt from the haunted look he keeps seeing in his eyes.

"God, Person, will you just stop talking?" Walt asks, and he sounds tired.

Ray snaps his mouth shut and doesn't say anything, doesn't say anything at all, and when he touches Walt's shoulder later, done watch and so tired he's going blind, Walt shrugs his hand off.

*

They're in corridors now, indoor places with lighting and heat and the ocean brushing up not so far away. They're home, or not, but almost, at least in the same fucking country as home. Ray runs into Walt in one of the corridors, one of the many corridors, and he wraps his hand around Walt's wrist, doesn't say anything, can't bring himself to say anything, just looks at Walt until Walt looks away.

"Just go," Walt says, and Ray does.

*

"Ray," Brad says after Ray's gone home alone, gone to his Momma and his shithole apartment and nothing else for him. He sounds like he thinks he knows how Ray feels, but he doesn't. Brad and Nate, they never pushed against the boundaries, they just let them solidify and push them further apart, so Brad doesn't know what it's like to have it and then lose it anyway.

"I don't want to talk about it," Ray says.

*

Walt goes back to Iraq, and Ray stays in Missouri, and it's like nothing ever happened except it did. Walt runs back across the world into the one place Ray couldn't want less, and Ray prays to a god he doesn't believe in to please, please let Walt live.

Ray hopes someone would call him if that doesn't happen, and he hopes that no one would, and mostly he hopes Walt knows what he's doing in all that desert sand without Ray watching his back.

_please don't die_, Ray thinks, and he gets that wish, if none of the others.

*

Ray gets married, marries a pretty girl who rolls her eyes sometimes when he's talking, the same way Walt did, and it's almost like having him but it isn't like that at all.

*

Ray fucks up all the time, and sometimes he'll admit it and sometimes he won't, but he doesn't know what he did wrong with this, doesn't know what he did, but whatever it is he's sorry, and he'd fix it if he could. Which isn't enough.

He knows it isn't enough.


End file.
